Category Archives: Arts and Humanities Action

ZatAMM meant a whole lot to me. I still haven’t figured out how well the philosophy holds up, but it inspired me when I became a teacher–even though I read it at a time when I would not have become a teacher if you had threatened that Donald Trump was going to be president of the country I lived in, if I didn’t–and the idea of quality is powerful in so many parts of my life. I love it more for the fact that my son read it and lives out many of the principles that Pirsig espouses.

This is the cover that will always live in my memory, even though the book fell apart some time ago.

Reading, Messy by Tim Harford, I came across this story of how for his most famous concert and most successful recording, Keith Jarrett played a broken and under-sized piano and despite its limitations reached new heights.

The opera house, possibly because they had no interest in the late night jazz series, had supplied a small out of tune and broken piano.

Jarrett played anyway finding a way to to make himself heard and improvising music around the limitations of the piano.

Jarrett was prepared for this as he had already been playing concerts with no music and no rehearsal.

“Sleep-deprived and harried that night, and his mood wasn’t helped by the fact that the opera house had supplied a relatively small, poorly tuned piano rather than the Bösendorfer grand that he requested. Even after an emergency tuning, the instrument supposedly sounded like a toy, with shrieking high notes and little projection in the low registers. On the record, having passed through two microphones, the piano has an almost otherworldly sound, like it’s five stories high and made of glass. Jarrett plays it harder than he does on his other solo recordings, bashing the keys and keeping largely to the mid-range notes, perhaps out of frustration. “What happened with this piano was that I was forced to play in what was—at the time—a new way,” he explained years later. “Somehow I felt I had to bring out whatever qualities this instrument had.”

As B-PEN continues to explore issues of teen stress, we highly recommend an upcoming event on April 30 sponsored by FoPA (Friends of Performing Arts).

BHS students, parents, and staff set high academic expectations. Brookline students are regarded for their intellectual achievement, successful admission into top colleges, and pursuit of career pathways. But this achievement can come at a cost, specifically, STRESS! We invite you to participate in a ‘day in the life’ of a student followed by a conversation on how the Performing Arts Department addresses the issue of stress within our classroom curricula.

This will be an interactive forum. Presenters will include BHS performing arts faculty and students, and everyone will have an opportunity to contribute to the conversation.

Come join us for this FoPA Forum hosted by Friends of Performing Arts.

6:15pm to 7:45pm (doors open at 6pm) on April 30, 2015 in the BHS Black Box Theater. This is a free event. To reserve your space, go to: